Messages

[rs]

Sek! Anha char qisi yer.
Shafka lajakes vezhven.
Yes! I have heard about you.
You (are a) great warrior.

Me vos zhavvors.
Vorsa vos addriva zhavvors.
He no dragon.
Fire (does) not kill dragon. (I have a feeling something is missing here. I wonder if we'll be given a word for the verb "to do".

Feedback is appreciated.

Is the rs of zhavvors allowed as a coda? Wouldn't it have to be zhavvorse?

I haven't taken the time to learn all the phonology rules yet. Where are they, by the way?

In Japanese it's:

  生きるか死ぬか、それは問題です。
  ikiru ka shinu ka, sore wa mondai desu.
  live   ?  die      ?,  that-TOP question is.

Japanese has "to be" but they translate the actual meaning of the poetry as opposed to the actual words. 

I'm pretty sure that Dothraki has LOTS of tasty words regarding living and dying. 

What is the word for the verb "to be" in Dothraki?

There isn't one...   

But that's a FEATURE, not a BUG. 

[emat]

I'm very impressed and I really like your use of emat for "like". 

Is that canonical?

[vosma]

If you take a look here you will see there is in fact a word for BUT: http://wiki.dothraki.org/dothraki/Vocabulary#References

vosma conj. but

Actually I don't know for sure if it is much recently, but I am kinda learning all the stuff from that wiki.
(Hope that helps u) 

Interesting. A literal mashup of "NOT+AND". I'm not sure I've ever encountered that before. 

It's very very helpful and I really appreciate your kind assistance and intention to be helpful!!

I need to go read through the dictionary again now that it's current.

[stops]

I don't think you hear the /k/-sound twice as in a stutter. It's more like a long /k/-sound if that makes sense.

Yeah. We double consonants like p, k and t in Finnish (Finnish is very close to Estonian, which I think Peterson has mentioned as one of the inspirations) and it's likely that goes the same way in Dothraki. More than stutterlike real doubling it's just a very short pause and then the plosive sound, like hra'kar. Only not quite. Actually you close the air flow, then give a shortest pause and then release the plosive, so yeah, it's pretty accurately described as a long k-sound.

At least this is how I think I do it. I'm no phonologist and can not quickly find any source to corroborate my explanation.

/k/ /t/ /p/ are all stops, so by definition they STOP. I think it makes much more sense to syllabify it as /hrak.kar/ or /hraʔ.kar/. It seems correct to me as it appears in the dictionary as of today. Other double things that are not stops /s/ /l/, etc. can be LONG because their sounds can be sustained and the nasal stops /n/ /m/ /ng(ŋ)/ can be optionally sustained by 'humming'. I think for these it's good to listen to DP from the relay text reading from the LCC4 audio. There are some double consonants in the general talk on verb classes too.

[Kifindirgi yer zali meyer nem akemi m'anhoon?]

Kifindirgi yer zali meyer nem akemi m'anhoon?

Why you want that.you [passive particle] will.marry with.me?

Thank you! VERY helpful.

Is kifindirgi always the fixed form for "why"? If so, it's the longest WH-word I've ever seen in any language.

...

As for the words themselves, they don't translate to exactly the same. Kemat is used for expressing that one part is marrying the other part as in "the groom marries the bride". Kemolat is used for what the third party i.e. the priest is doing. "The priest married the groom to the bride". I guess you could translate it as "The priest officiated the marrige of the groom to the bride." or something like that.

Is it possible that ‹ol› commonly or even productively produces something like the causative?

[Kifindirgi yer zali meyer nem akemi m'anhoon?]

Kifindirgi yer zali meyer nem akemi m'anhoon? seems like nicely concentrated one sentence grammatical rollercoaster.

Could I request that you GLOSS it? That would be super-helpful to me.

   

If that were true, we would have one more indicator for determining animacy.

Very clever!!

Such a puzzle, this language!

The way David describes it is that it does sound like arabic to someone who dosen't speak arabic since we are not really that familiar with hearing arabic so when we hear the velar fricative [x ] and the uvular plosive [q] it immediately reminds us of arabic.

Ya, the verb classes are intersting. Though it will probably be really hard to keep track of it and learn it all. There was a quote in an interview with the show creators Benioff and Weiss where they said that "I've been told Klingon was hard to learn, so we asked that it be easier to learn than Klingon." This is actually not true. David says that they never asked that. In fact Dothraki is much harder to learn than Klingon. What they are probably referring to is how easy it is to pronounce. It is at least easier to pronounce than Klingon is and that's really what matters for the show anyway since the actors won't be learning the language per se but only learning to pronounce it.

I think the doubled consonants also contribute to it sounding Arabic-y. And the rhythm.

Klingon is not that much more difficult to pronounce although the initial and final glottal stops on 'U' (the opera) are a bit tricky. I'm sure that in the big picture of things, English is MUCH more difficult to pronounce than Dothraki, but not for me because it's my native language.

I agree that Dothraki is very very difficult to learn (grammatically) and clearly David has made it that way (at least partially) for his own enjoyment.

He's doing it "because he can". It's certainly his prerogative.

It continues to remind me of Classical Latin from a learnability perspective.

[guess]

I have decided to guess

vizhad   silver      ni
addo ajjalani   midnight   ni
ador   chair     ni
ahesh   snow   n
asavva   sky   n
ase   word   n
ave   father   n
ayena   bell   n
azhasavva   blessing    n
azho   gift   ni
chare   ear   n
chiftik   cricket    ni
chiori   woman   n
dorvi   goat   ni
dosh khaleen   group of widowed khaleesi   n
dothraki   The dothraki people "the riders"    n
esshey   roof    ni
eveth   water   n
fire   ring   ni
foth   throat   n
gamiz   rice   ni
gende   rip   ni
gizikhven   candy   ni
hadaen   food   ni
haesh   spawn   n
hatif   face   n
havazh   sea   n
heth   rim   ni
hrakka   white lion   n
hranna   a type of grass   ni
hrazef   horse   n
idrik   leader of the hunt   n
jalan   moon   n
jalan qoyi   harvest moon   n
jano   dog    ni
jaqqa rhan   "mercy men" not litteral   n
jesh   ice   ni
jorok   corn   ni
khal   leader, king   n
khalakka   prince, son of khal   n
khaleesi   queen   n
khas   group of bodyguards, protectors   n
kher   flesh   n
loqam   arrow   n
maegi   wise, sorceress of black magic   n
mawizzi   rabbit   ni
mithri   rest   ni
nhare   head   n
noreth   hair   ni
orvik   whip   n
qazer   apple      ni
qeso   basket   ni
qosar   spider   ni
rakh   boy, lamb   n
rhae mhar   Sore-foot   ni
rhaesh   land, country   ni
rhaggat   cart   ni
riv   tip   ni
rizh   son   n
sajo   steed      n
san   heap, pile, much      ni
shierak qiya   comet, bleeding star   n
shiqeth   iron   ni
shor   garment mainly worn by women   ni
tih   eye   n
tikkheya   verb   ni
vado   turnip   ni
vaes   city   n
vezh   stallion   n
vikeesi   slang for annoying woman.   n
voji   people   n
vort   tooth   ni
zande   satchel, sack   ni
zhaqe   bass   ni
zhavvorsi   of the dragon   n
zir   bird   ni (based on allegra)

The verb classes are very interesting. I really like the creativity involved in the interplay of them with the various 'unexpected' case markings. It's quite clever and playful and that's what makes this kind of language so fun.

I also liked his reading of the relay text. The sound of it is great!

I'm not watching the series yet, so that was really my first time to hear any good chunk of the language spoken. It is very Arabic-esque, huh?

Well, he could but that would require time to go through it all one word at a time with him. He's not really the guy who would come in here and post it all on the forum. He said at one point that it would feel strange for him to interact at that level. There will be words that we will have to double check with him at some point but the more words we can figure out in other ways the better. We still only have around 350 words of a language that has over 2700 words created so far so the list of words to double check with him could get really long.

I understand his not wanting to be engaged in this forum, but if I were he, I would have the animacy of all of my nouns noted in my own records. If I were sent the list that appears above, I (personally) wouldn't mind indicating the base form and animacy of all the nouns on the list—especially considering how critical it is that animacy be understood and factored into grammatically correct sentences. He seems to have built this feature into the language because he wanted to; as a point of personal pride and satisfaction. I read nothing in G0T that indicated to me that GRRM included this animacy concept overtly. I would think he'd be highly motivated to teach these things to anyone willing to pay attention and learn.

But, again, that's just my personal feeling. I don't know David, so it's a bit presumptuous of me to project.

Is David still in the political situation that he can't just tell you what the animacy is for each noun item? He has to know already to be able to generate translations, right?

I can't imagine that HBO cares about keeping that information secret. I'd be SHOCKED if they even understand the concept of what it is and its relationship to the complexities of the grammar.

Revealing this information could in no way endanger the unfolding of the story on screen. If the word is already 'out there', what harm could it be for the very few folks who are learning the language to know what the animacy designation is for 'released' nouns?

I understand that for some folks it might be really fun to 'unravel' the mysteries of the 'irregular ni' like a puzzle, but just asking him does not seem unreasonable to me either as an option for how to get the info. He can always just say "Sorry. Can't."

If this is not the correct place for me to post this then please move it.

It seems that The following things will need to be tracked in the dictionary as they are not predictable based on other rules.

• for NOUNS :: ANIMACY on an entry by entry basis (at least for animals)
• for PREPOSITIONS :: CASE MARKING
• for PRONOUNS :: CASE VARIATION (anha, anna, anni, anhaan, ___ / me, mae, ___, ___, ___) where irregular (if not always).

Are there any irregular verbs yet?

What else am I missing?